Charley Davidson 01Bis For I Have Sinned

Read Charley Davidson 01Bis For I Have Sinned for Free Online Page A

Book: Read Charley Davidson 01Bis For I Have Sinned for Free Online
Authors: Darynda Jones
feelings and responses his touch evoked so vivid. I could almost feel him now, his hands sliding up my thighs, as if he were in the shower with me at that very moment. I could feel his palms rest on my hips and the length of his hard body press against my backside. I reached behind me, ran my fingers along his steel buttocks as he pulled me onto him. His muscles contracted and released underneath my touch, like the tide’s flow and ebb under the sway of the moon. When I forced a hand between us, slid it down his abdomen to encircle his erection, he hissed in a breath of pleasure and hugged me to him.
    I felt his mouth at my ear, his breath fan over my cheek. We had never spoken. The heat and intensity of the dreams left little room for conversation.
    But for the first time, I heard a whispered utterance, faint and almost imperceptible. “Dutch.”
    My heartbeats skyrocketed, and I jerked to attention, glancing around the shower, searching for ghosts in cracks and crevices. Nothing. Had I fallen asleep? In the shower? I couldn’t have. I was still standing. Barely. I clutched the shower valves to keep myself upright, wondering what in the crazy afterlife had just happened.
    After steadying myself, I turned off the water and grabbed a towel. Dutch. I’d distinctly heard the word Dutch.
    Only one person on Earth had ever called me Dutch, once, a very long time ago.

 
    Read on for a preview of
     
     
    DARYNDA JONES

    Second Grave on the Left

Chapter One
    GRIM REAPERS ARE TO DIE FOR.
    — T-SHIRT SEEN OFTEN ON CHARLOTTE JEAN DAVIDSON, GRIM REAPER EXTRAORDINAIRE
    “Charley, hurry, wake up.”
    Fingers with pointy nails bit into my shoulders, doing their darnedest to vanquish the fog of sleep I’d been marinating in. They shook me hard enough to cause a small earthquake in Oklahoma. Since I lived in New Mexico, this was a problem.
    Judging by the quality and pitch of the intruder’s voice, I was fairly certain the person accosting me was my best friend, Cookie. I let an annoyed sigh slip through my lips, resigning myself to the fact that my life was a series of interruptions and demands. Mostly demands. Probably because I was the only grim reaper this side of Mars, the only portal to the other side the departed could cross through. At least, those who hadn’t crossed right after they died and were stuck on Earth. Which was a freaking lot. Having been born the grim reaper, I couldn’t remember a time when dead people weren’t knocking on my door—metaphorically, as dead people rarely knocked—asking for my assistance with some unfinished business. It amazed me how many of the dearly departed forgot to turn off the stove.
    For the most part, those who cross through me simply feel they’ve been on Earth long enough. Enter the reaper. Aka, moi. The departed can see me from anywhere in the world and can cross to the other side through me. I’ve been told I’m like a beacon as bright as a thousand suns, which would suck for a departed with a martini hangover.
    I’m Charlotte Davidson: private investigator, police consultant, all-around badass. Or I could’ve been a badass, had I stuck with those lessons in mixed martial arts. I was only in that class to learn how to kill people with paper. And—oh, yes—let us not forget grim reaper. Admittedly, being the reaper wasn’t all bad. I had a handful of friends I’d kill for—some alive, some not so much—a family of which I was quite grateful some were alive, some not so much, and an in with one of the most powerful beings in the universe, Reyes Alexander Farrow, the part-human, part-supermodel son of Satan.
    Thus, as the grim reaper, I understood dead people. Their sense of timing pretty much sucked. Not a problem. But this being woken up in the middle of the night by a living, breathing being who had her nails sharpened regularly at World of Knives was just wrong.
    I slapped at the hands like a boy in a girl fight, then continued to slap air when my intruder rushed

Similar Books

The Survival Kit

Donna Freitas

LOWCOUNTRY BOOK CLUB

Susan M. Boyer

Love Me Tender

Susan Fox

Watcher's Web

Patty Jansen

The Other Anzacs

Peter Rees

Borrowed Wife

Patrícia Wilson

Shadow Puppets

Orson Scott Card

All That Was Happy

M.M. Wilshire